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Brief
Harveys worked with affilinet to meet the following objectives:
- Meet Year 1 sales targets (as set by client)
- Establish a strong publisher base and raise profile in the affiliate sector
- Ensure that offline promotions are coordinated with affiliate activity
- Performance based target – 5%-10% of total turnover.
Strategy
The success of the program was dependent on affiliates being able to earn commission, therefore the key strategy was to ensure the program was viable for affiliates to promote:
- Helping to develop the Harveys website in accordance with affiliate needs to ensure maximum conversion and revenue for both merchant and affiliate
- Providing an attractive and innovative commercial offering
Creativity & Innovation
The primary innovation has come from Harveys not seeing the affiliate network as simply a marketing channel. Instead, they fully utilised the knowledge and resources of their network to not only deliver a successful affiliate program, but to help improve their overall online offering.
Harveys has treated their affiliate network like another member of their own team, involving the network in internal meetings, as well as round table meetings with their media agency and third party web developers.
In addition, Harveys created a new voucher code facility especially for affiliates, thus enabling offline promotions to be executed online for the first time. This also allowed Harveys to start making use of their network’s recently launched Voucher Code Tool.
Having never before provided a product data feed for third parties, Harveys was able to use feedback from its network to provide a new service for their affiliates to use.
Harveys has ambitious plans to continue their online growth, and they see the affiliate sector as instrumental to achieving their goals. By seeing the potential of affiliates from the outset and providing the support and infrastructure required to build a strong program, they have already established themselves as a key affiliate advertiser. Further examples of the creative methods that have been employed will be outlined in the next two sections.
Methods Deployed (Technical)
In response to affiliate requests and feedback, Harveys implemented a number of website changes in order to improve conversion and make the program more attractive for publishers to promote:
- Product page design and layout improvements
- Landing and Hot Offers page improvements for affiliate deep linking
- Changes to the ‘As seen on TV’ page to make it easier to navigate and to increase the impact of offline activity on online sales
- Introduction of interest free credit online to increase conversion and commission payouts through higher order values
Methods Deployed (Commercial)
Harveys have consistently shown that the affiliate channel is a vital part of their online strategy with the following initiatives:
- Promotions that were previously only available offline, such as the 25% VIP Events, were extended online especially for the affiliate market
- Exclusive discount codes created in response to affiliate demands
- Collaborating with individual publishers for bespoke tactical activity
- Creating co branded landing pages for affiliates
- Flexible terms for PPC affiliates
- Providing access to Harveys multi channel marketing schedule for promotion planning
Results
Outcome, including formal evaluation of results & ROI
From September 08 to August 09, affilinet helped Harveys achieve 318% of their initial Year 1 affiliate revenue target. January 09 produced a spectacular result- meeting 80% of the Year 1 target in just one month. The affiliate channel now accounts for around 20% of Harveys’ overall online revenue.
The high level of collaboration between merchant and network has provided a number of benefits:
- Harveys is able to develop their website with affiliates in mind from the outset
- Harveys gained a different perspective on the website at the development stage- a perspective that merchants rarely are able to utilise due to the normal late stage involvement of the affiliate network
- affilinet has been given a unique insight into the Harveys business, providing a greater level of understanding; ensuring strong working relationships between the merchant and its affiliates.
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